Park and write
A homeless woman in London has been living in a car since last summer. But by writing a blog she has put herself in touch with an international audience.
It's a tale of our time - about being cut off from everything around you but still connected to people thousands of miles away.
A woman becomes homeless, so she gets into her car and drives. Except she has nowhere to go - so she stays in the car, with all her possessions heaped in the back, sleeping in the front seats, parking in secluded streets.
For eight months, no one notices her, because she makes sure she looks respectable, taking showers and even ironing her clothes in public places like hospitals. She has made herself invisible, out of touch from anyone she used to know - and keeping separate from other homeless people.
But this is the information age. And even though she doesn't speak to anyone, she can go into a library where she can access the internet and write an online journal - a homelessness blog - which she uses to describe all her unspoken experiences and feelings.
'Bizarre life'
So even though she has no one to talk to in London, using the identity of Wandering Scribe, she's exchanging e-mails with people in the United States - and the New York Times interviews her for its own story on homeless people living in cars. There's even talk of a documentary about her.
How did this happen? How does an articulate, educated woman in her early 30s end up living in a car?
Describing herself as feeling "ashamed" to be caught in this "bizarre life", the author of this Wandering Scribe blog wants to remain anonymous. But she explains how, last August, she began living in a car.
As with most cases, there wasn't a single trigger for her homelessness, but a series of practical and emotional problems that built into a crisis.
Having already lost her job and with money problems, she was struggling to pay the rent. A previous relationship had ended - and last summer she says she went through what she now recognises as a psychological breakdown.
"Psychological problems can happen to anyone. If you're lucky you've got your friends and family to support you - but I had a problem and had no one to support me," she says.
Alone and without anywhere to turn, she got into her car and started driving.
'Ashamed'
"It was frightening. The only way I could survive was not to think about it, to become detached, because if I thought about it, I just couldn't do it."
"In denial" about being homeless, she kept away from other homeless people and deliberately concealed how she was living.
"I was ashamed of letting go of the reins of my life, and having nothing to back it up, without having any support network. What kind of person are you if you don't have friends? But it happens."
Her life has since become a surreptitious daily round of using public places for washing, keeping clean and staying warm, using her benefits to pay for petrol and food - and spending her nights in a sleeping bag, trying to keep warm in a car.
She says that it's "exhausting, I'm at the end of my tether", worn down by a lack of sleep, fears about being thrown out of her regular haunts.
Ambiguity
But in parallel with this grim experience, there is a separate writing life in the blog, revealing her inner-life, giving her a voice as Wandering Scribe - a process which has allowed her to reach out from her parked car to a global audience.
It's often powerfully written, giving a human face to anonymous suffering, talking about her childhood, her sense of rejection and her struggle to regain her confidence and self-respect.
There is also a close-up view of the daily struggle of homelessness - the fears of sleeping in her car, her small victories in keeping warm, how she cleans her hair in hospital showers and gets discount food in staff canteens.
This blog has produced its own regular readership - people who e-mail when its author doesn't post the next instalment. And she says that the blog has become an attempt to "keep me sane, and in a way to start to reach out".
The blog's anonymity is also part of this modern tale. As with any such online journal, there's an ambiguity about its origin. One can't see the author, or even know her real name.
There have been e-mails questioning whether this blog is a media "project", rather than a genuine account of homelessness - a charge she wearily rejects.
In her blog this weekend, she wrote: "Some people see you struggling and want your complete downfall, living in my car is not bad enough, they want me on the streets completely, in every sense. I feel that."
Her main aim now is to begin making the return journey to a settled life, she says, as she begins looking for a job - a process made more difficult by a lack of a permanent address.
'Hidden homeless'
If the stereotype of homelessness is of unkempt boozers sleeping rough, Wandering Scribe doesn't fit any of these expectations.
Meeting her in person, she is dressed respectably; is intelligent, observant, engaging company. She could be the person sitting next to you in the cafe. Which makes it even stranger that she's going back each night to a nylon sleeping bag in a battered old Rover.
But she certainly isn't alone - she says she has had e-mails from other people living in cars - and in anonymous cities it's all too easy for detached people who have problems in their lives to stumble and fall out of sight.
The scale of the problem of such "hidden homelessness" remains uncertain, but homeless charity Crisis estimates that there could be 380,000 such people across the country.
"A very common factor is family breakdown - and a lack of social networks - where there is no one able to support people," says Lucy Maggs. "A huge part of homelessness is about isolation - which becomes very destructive in itself."
Such disconnected individuals, who are often "not in a frame of mind to help themselves" are unable or unwilling to contact any support agencies and remain off the radar for homelessness statistics.
Wandering Scribe has her own ambitions: "Hopefully I'll be out of here soon, somewhere with my own room where I can shut the door on the world ... with curtains I can draw."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4923488.stm
A homeless woman in London has been living in a car since last summer. But by writing a blog she has put herself in touch with an international audience.
It's a tale of our time - about being cut off from everything around you but still connected to people thousands of miles away.
A woman becomes homeless, so she gets into her car and drives. Except she has nowhere to go - so she stays in the car, with all her possessions heaped in the back, sleeping in the front seats, parking in secluded streets.
For eight months, no one notices her, because she makes sure she looks respectable, taking showers and even ironing her clothes in public places like hospitals. She has made herself invisible, out of touch from anyone she used to know - and keeping separate from other homeless people.
But this is the information age. And even though she doesn't speak to anyone, she can go into a library where she can access the internet and write an online journal - a homelessness blog - which she uses to describe all her unspoken experiences and feelings.
'Bizarre life'
So even though she has no one to talk to in London, using the identity of Wandering Scribe, she's exchanging e-mails with people in the United States - and the New York Times interviews her for its own story on homeless people living in cars. There's even talk of a documentary about her.
How did this happen? How does an articulate, educated woman in her early 30s end up living in a car?
Describing herself as feeling "ashamed" to be caught in this "bizarre life", the author of this Wandering Scribe blog wants to remain anonymous. But she explains how, last August, she began living in a car.
As with most cases, there wasn't a single trigger for her homelessness, but a series of practical and emotional problems that built into a crisis.
Having already lost her job and with money problems, she was struggling to pay the rent. A previous relationship had ended - and last summer she says she went through what she now recognises as a psychological breakdown.
"Psychological problems can happen to anyone. If you're lucky you've got your friends and family to support you - but I had a problem and had no one to support me," she says.
Alone and without anywhere to turn, she got into her car and started driving.
'Ashamed'
"It was frightening. The only way I could survive was not to think about it, to become detached, because if I thought about it, I just couldn't do it."
"In denial" about being homeless, she kept away from other homeless people and deliberately concealed how she was living.
"I was ashamed of letting go of the reins of my life, and having nothing to back it up, without having any support network. What kind of person are you if you don't have friends? But it happens."
Her life has since become a surreptitious daily round of using public places for washing, keeping clean and staying warm, using her benefits to pay for petrol and food - and spending her nights in a sleeping bag, trying to keep warm in a car.
She says that it's "exhausting, I'm at the end of my tether", worn down by a lack of sleep, fears about being thrown out of her regular haunts.
Ambiguity
But in parallel with this grim experience, there is a separate writing life in the blog, revealing her inner-life, giving her a voice as Wandering Scribe - a process which has allowed her to reach out from her parked car to a global audience.
It's often powerfully written, giving a human face to anonymous suffering, talking about her childhood, her sense of rejection and her struggle to regain her confidence and self-respect.
There is also a close-up view of the daily struggle of homelessness - the fears of sleeping in her car, her small victories in keeping warm, how she cleans her hair in hospital showers and gets discount food in staff canteens.
This blog has produced its own regular readership - people who e-mail when its author doesn't post the next instalment. And she says that the blog has become an attempt to "keep me sane, and in a way to start to reach out".
The blog's anonymity is also part of this modern tale. As with any such online journal, there's an ambiguity about its origin. One can't see the author, or even know her real name.
There have been e-mails questioning whether this blog is a media "project", rather than a genuine account of homelessness - a charge she wearily rejects.
In her blog this weekend, she wrote: "Some people see you struggling and want your complete downfall, living in my car is not bad enough, they want me on the streets completely, in every sense. I feel that."
Her main aim now is to begin making the return journey to a settled life, she says, as she begins looking for a job - a process made more difficult by a lack of a permanent address.
'Hidden homeless'
If the stereotype of homelessness is of unkempt boozers sleeping rough, Wandering Scribe doesn't fit any of these expectations.
Meeting her in person, she is dressed respectably; is intelligent, observant, engaging company. She could be the person sitting next to you in the cafe. Which makes it even stranger that she's going back each night to a nylon sleeping bag in a battered old Rover.
But she certainly isn't alone - she says she has had e-mails from other people living in cars - and in anonymous cities it's all too easy for detached people who have problems in their lives to stumble and fall out of sight.
The scale of the problem of such "hidden homelessness" remains uncertain, but homeless charity Crisis estimates that there could be 380,000 such people across the country.
"A very common factor is family breakdown - and a lack of social networks - where there is no one able to support people," says Lucy Maggs. "A huge part of homelessness is about isolation - which becomes very destructive in itself."
Such disconnected individuals, who are often "not in a frame of mind to help themselves" are unable or unwilling to contact any support agencies and remain off the radar for homelessness statistics.
Wandering Scribe has her own ambitions: "Hopefully I'll be out of here soon, somewhere with my own room where I can shut the door on the world ... with curtains I can draw."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4923488.stm
